Leadership Lessons: Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher by Peters Will

Author:Peters, Will [Peters, Will]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Business/Leadership
ISBN: 9781640190726
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2017-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

​Affairs of the Heart

Lincoln was now launched in politics and the law, but he was less fortunate in love. He had been courting the petite, blue-eyed Ann Rutledge, whose father owned a tavern in New Salem. But Ann died of typhoid fever in 1835 at the age of twenty-two. Lincoln’s grief was overwhelming; by some accounts, he suffered a six-month bout of depression.

Two years later, he proposed marriage to Mary Owens, a young woman he had courted before he met Ann. Mary had gone back to her father’s farm in Kentucky, where she gained considerable weight and lost several teeth. Nevertheless, Mary thought herself a refined young woman and, in this second courtship, often criticized Lincoln for his backwoods manners. Although the circumstances are unclear, Abe wrote and offered to sever their relationship. She never answered, and it was effectively over.

Shortly after that, Lincoln met twenty-one-year-old Mary Todd, the charming daughter of a wealthy banker and dry-goods merchant from Lexington, Kentucky. She was also a cousin of Lincoln’s mentor and partner John Stuart.

Raised as a genteel Southern belle with slaves for servants, Mary Todd was related to former First Lady Dolley Todd Madison. Better educated than most women of her time, Mary had attended a boarding school in Lexington. There she had learned to speak French and studied dance, drama, and music. Quick-witted and popular, she became accustomed at an early age to political discussions with distinguished men. Her oldest sister, Elizabeth, had married the son of the governor of Kentucky; her sister Frances would marry the Illinois governor’s son.

After quarreling with her stepmother, Mary had come to Springfield to live with Elizabeth, who was pregnant with her first child. Lincoln’s future law partner Herndon described Mary at twenty as cultured, graceful, and dignified: “She was an excellent conversationalist, and soon became the belle of the town.” Her sister Elizabeth noticed that Lincoln “would listen and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power.” Ten years older than Mary, Lincoln was also sixteen inches taller.

The two had much to talk about: They both worshiped Henry Clay, the Kentucky statesman who clashed with Andrew Jackson and founded the Whig party, and both loved the poetry of Shakespeare. They could quote either Shakespeare or Clay at length.

In October 1842, Lincoln asked Mary to marry him. The union took place on November 4, 1842, in the parlor of the Edwards mansion.

The newlyweds moved into a $4-a-week furnished room in the Globe Tavern, the smallest space Mary had occupied since her days in her school’s dormitory. Meals were shared in a common dining room and parlor. Lincoln was still paying off his New Salem debt; the couple had so little money they couldn’t afford to visit her family in Kentucky. Yet Mary didn’t resent boarding-house life. The Lincolns lived in the Globe for ten months until their first child, Robert, was born, after which they moved into a rented cottage. In May 1844, with the law practice thriving and the debt less

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